Kris Jenkins: Lockout is the owners’ time to be greedy

Posted by Michael David Smith on April 21, 2011, 7:35 AM EDT

AP

Kris Jenkins is one of the many free agents facing an uncertain future because the lockout is preventing him from shopping himself to teams and signing a contract. But Jenkins says he’s made peace with what the lockout is all about.

And what the lockout is all about, according to Jenkins, is the owners trying to squeeze every last nickel out of the players’ work.

44 responses to “Kris Jenkins: Lockout is the owners’ time to be greedy”

That attitude and mindset is exactly why D. Smith has been able to manipulate the players. When he says “It’s the worst deal in the history of sports”, morons like Jenkins believe it. I doubt most of the players are even aware of what was in the last offer that their “leadership” walked out on.

Good old Kris, he sure came up with something new. I give him the right to free speech but look in the mirror Kris and I think greedy will fit both sides. I hope you saved your money like Carson Palmer did.

These statement completely reflect the ignorance of the players. Last time I checked, the players were the ones who walked away from the table, stated they were no longer a union and filed several lawsuits, and oh yea made NO concessions during the negotiations.

The owners put millions of dollar out to pay salaries, build stadiums and make football happen.

Yes, player are out playing the game, and could get hurt. But tell me where else these players can go and make millions playing a game. The players are the ones holding out for a contract, teh player sign endorsements? Wheres the risk?

That must have been a riveting interview. Chris Jenkins talking about someone else being greedy. When in good shape he was an awesome player. The reason he keeps blowing out his knees is because he weighs about 375 and should weigh 325. The only reason he has lost 20 lbs is because he probably ate his wallet.

Dont worry Kris , youll get your millions for playing a kids game. Ohhh wait that sounds a little greedy dont ya think? 99% of most Professional players are way over paid so enjoy what you get and dont invest in custom jewelry… maybe a safe investment would be the answer.

With each comment that I hear from the player’s side of this deal I side more and more with the owners. I started out neutral, quickly moving to the point where I hope the NFL smashes the union. What the players don’t understand is that they are dispensable. That’s just the way it is. And in a situation like that they have little leverage. The longer this goes on, the more De Smith is going to look like a loser.

I can’t understand why everyone is so pro owner. Guys the owners have been planning on locking out the players for years now. They are the greedy ones. They have billions and business couldn’t be better right now in football. They suck every last Penny out of us fans with ticket prices, psl’s, parking and concessions. That still isn’t enough for them cause now they want to take more from the players too. They are the greedy ones it’s disgusting. They get millions from their tv contracts too even the smaller market teams. A sport like basketball is actually struggling where teams actually are losing money they will have a lockout but for good reason. NFL teams rake the money in even the smaller market teams and then the bs us fans and try to make it look like they are hurting. It’s a crock of s*it. The owners are and will forever be greedy and if I was a player and they were trying to get even richer off me I’d tell them to go screw themselves too.

” The owners are and will forever be greedy and if I was a player and they were trying to get even richer off me I’d tell them to go screw themselves too.:

Oh yea? And then what would the moron player do? Get a job perhaps? Doing what? Without football, and the possibilities there from, most of the players have zip. No skills, no abilities, nothing. “get rich off me” ????? That’s priceless.

But wait, they can always market purple trank, drank, fizz, or whatever it’s called. I can’t remember. Maybe I should ring up Johnny Jolly and find out.

@ny82jy,
Your grasp of this situation is wrong. You blame the owners for the big prices, PSLs, etc. That is an ignorant assessment. If you want to blame anybody for the high prices, blame the guy sitting next to you in the stands. The owners have set prices that high because people will pay it, and they have been. PSLs are horrible for the average fan, but they work because some fans will pay that money so “the other guy” doesn’t get the seats. The NFL does make money because of the players in general, but the players’ argument is based on themselves specifically. The NFL will make money off any players (past, present, future), not just these guys. You blame the owners for getting richer off the players but you conveniently disregard the fact that these players are getting rich because of the NFL. There are other leagues out there but they choose to play foor the NFL because they make more money. As for your contention about the lockout plan, you are only 1/2 right. The owners did plan on locking the players out but the part you ignore is the plan was only IF the players failed to negotiate in good faith. The players wanted to avoid a new deal and did not negotiate. They decertified to gain a legal advantage from an abnormal football market. The players walked out, decertified and THEN got locked out. It seems your ire is misdirected.

GEE I wonder what Kris got for his alotment of Super Bowltickets or what did he charge for his autograph at the local grocery apperance? I have to say the players don’t get it. Loose lips sink ships!!!!

Come on KJ, look at your OWN contract history. A year after a new contract with the Panthers, you are traded to the Jets. Do you continue to work under that contract…Nooooooooo. You renegotiate a NEW one. WTF is the difference now that the owners want to do the SAME thing. Look in the mirror when you use the word GREED.

“I’ve never seen a billionaire complain about not having enough money.”
Tell that to the Rothchilds and Rockefellers.
They’re trillionaires, although you’ll never hear their names mentioned among the “world’s richest”.
They hide behind their corporations.
Once you have money, the only thing left to obtain is power.

1) The “average joe” views the owner as a successful businessman that is a responsible and respectable citizen, whereas the player is viewed as irresponsible, spoiled, and sometimes criminal.

2) The “average joe” wishes they could play a game for at least a six-figure amount instead of their regular “9 to 5” and the hatred stems out of jealousy.

People tend to ignore that the owners willingly opted out of the last CBA and want an extra billion dollars on top of the highest grossing revenues in league history.

The players have the right to seek what’s best for them just like the owners do.

Going into March 11th, the players had a very reasonable position to stand behind. The only problem is that since that date, they have made bad decision after bad decision and it started with more than half the plaintiffs not even showing up to court.

I understand what you are saying but my point is that NFL revenues and ratings are at a all time high. The owners aren’t suffering at all I refuse to believe that. There is no reason for them to be trying to take a bigger piece of the pie than they are already getting IMO. I live in the nj area and let me tell you that there are alot of jets and giants fans that no longer have season tickets because of the ridiculos psl’s these owners have screwed everyone with. They did the fans so wrong with that it’s incredible. Not everyone including myself can afford to go nearly as much anymore. My point is that the owners do nothing and could give a crap about the fans. They just want all the money they can get. Why should the players who have on average have a 3-4year playing career all of a sudden take less money for playing the same amount of games . It doesn’t make sense to me, they put alot on the line goin out there every Sunday and as a player they have to try to make as much as possible as they can in their short careers. Both sides are greedy but it just surprises me that everyone sides so much with the billionaire owners. How could anyone feel bad for them?

The hypocrisy of all the anti player posters here is out of control, you guys are saying horrible things about these players, but when the games come back, you will be chearing them like 12 year olds at a bieber concert.
dont take it out on them because you got cut from your high school teams even before the tryouts.

ny82jy, once again and as finfan said you are blaming the wrong people for the increase in PSL cost. Its called supply and demand. Sure maybe you can’t afford a PSL but the next guy can. As long as someone is willing to pay it the prices will remain or increase. It would be great if everything was cheap and affordable but thats not life. So be mad at the next guy who is willing to pay the increase price in tickets not the owners.

Also, the owners aren’t asking the players to take a pay cut. No player will lose any money, their percentage of the pie will shrink but it’s money the players have never seen and were never promised. They will still make millions.

You won’t feel bad for billionaires…but you do feel bad for the millionaires who are currently threatening to change the game for the worst. Makes no sense to me.

cdaws84 says
Also, the owners aren’t asking the players to take a pay cut. No player will lose any money, their percentage of the pie will shrink but it’s money the players have never seen and were never promised. They will still make millions.
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There percentage of the pie will shrink but they wont lose any money? How is that? Their percentages will decrease every season in the deal and guess what the revenues will keep increasing every year. Im not sure on the exact projections but they say that the nfl will keep getting bigger and generate more money each season for the years to come. So the owners will get more and the players will get less.

As someone mentioned before- It’s OK for players to hold out of a contract they agreed to and seek a new deal, but not OK for the owners to do the same?

And that’s not hypocritical?

People who keep blaming the owners for locking the players need to remember that A) The players gave the owners the right to terminate the contract two years early and lock out the players in the last CBA, and B) There was no lockout until the players walked away from the negotiating table and filed their sham decertification.

The owners did what they contractually agree to only after the players walked away.

Lots of comments on here about the “moronic” and “greedy” players, but in reality the owners are truly the morons.

If they wouldn’t have accepted the recently expired CBA in 2006 that was such a bad deal, we wouldn’t be here today. What a moronic idea, “lets accept this horrible deal…we can always negotiate it down in the future.” I guess when you are playing with inheritances…

It is hard to go back once you have established a certain level of benefits, entitlements, pay grade, etc. That is why certain social entitlement programs will never go away!

It is easy to see why the players aren’t rolling over and why the owners want a new deal, but the owners are idiots for putting themselves in this spot…and the fans.

Goodel is a no-nothin-wimpy-geek. How can a man like that lead. That’s right. He can’t. I bet i could walk up to him and scream “Boo” and he’d crap his pants and jump 10 feet in the air. I ain’t even excited about the draft. I usually throw huge draft parties. not this year. I’m going camping and water skiing all weekend instead of watching the draft. Watch it for what? There ain’t no league, there ain’t no union, there ain’t no mini camps or OTA’s. Yall do the math. To me, an abreviated season sux and is worse to me than not having one at all. That’s what both the owners and players need to experience really. An entire season lost. i actually bet the losses experienced by both sides would be enough to prevent this from happening again for a long time. Geaux Saints!

@ny82jy says:
Apr 21, 2011 8:45 AM
I can’t understand why everyone is so pro owner. Guys the owners have been planning on locking out the players for years now. They are the greedy ones. They have billions and business couldn’t be better right now in football. They suck every last Penny out of us fans with ticket prices, psl’s, parking and concessions. That still isn’t enough for them cause now they want to take more from the players too. They are the greedy ones it’s disgusting. They get millions from their tv contracts too even the smaller market teams. A sport like basketball is actually struggling where teams actually are losing money they will have a lockout but for good reason. NFL teams rake the money in even the smaller market teams and then the bs us fans and try to make it look like they are hurting. It’s a crock of s*it. The owners are and will forever be greedy and if I was a player and they were trying to get even richer off me I’d tell them to go screw themselves too.

The reason many fans choose the owners’ side in this mess is quite simple. If you follow each side’s position to the end, which one is beneficial to the fans and the game’s future?

If the owner’s get their way, the elite players will not be able to make quite as much and the rookies won’t be guaranteed generational wealth before they ever see a playbook or step on the field. The rest of the players would roughly stay the same or maybe a slight increase in pay/benefits. All teams remain viable and the league is sustained in an atmosphere of parity.

If the players get their way, the top 5% of players will make huge money AT THE EXPENSE OF THE REST OF THE PLAYERS. The salary cap would be gone, which also means the floor would be gone as well. Special teamers and back-ups would be lucky to make $60k. All standardization would be gone. There would be no way to enforce “headhunter” type plays. Safety would be less of a priority. Those mega TV contracts would not go to the league, they would go to the big market teams and the rest of the league would only get a split based on who they play and when. Each team would be responsible for their own schedules. Individual rosters would vary. one team could have 100 players while another could only afford 40. There are more examples but you should get the picture…

The comments in this thread just make me weep. To see all of you ham and eggers siding with the uber-rich in this country just shows that the divide and conquer strategy they’ve been employing for the non-rich over the past century has worked to perfection. You guys side with guys who bend you over for PSL’s, $40 parking, $8 hot dogs, $150 upper level seats yet somehow find ways to bash the players who make a fraction of the owners? Are they just supposed to accept any deal because you can’t do what they can do for a living while the owners make out like bandits? How perverted is this?

Why do people continually root for the guy with a foot on their throat? This is like chickens rooting for Col Sanders. The owners don’t care about you yet they somehow have you convinced that taking their side is in your interest. Meanwhile, the same strategies played out here are being used in your own companies to keep your pay and benefits down. You guys root for your CEO after he lays off 20% of the workforce while he gets a multi million $ bonus he doesn’t need?

This is greed pure and simple. This is rich people not being satisfied with being stupid rich, they want to be obscenely rich. And the fact that they have commoners like you folks taking their side while they have their hands in your pockets is why this country is in a freefall. This would be funny actually if not overwhelmingly sad at the same time.

I don’t think any fan wants the future that Jeffrey Kessler wants for the league. Nobody wants the salary cap to go away or for the financial landscape to resemble the “wild west”.

Before March 11th, the framework for a rookie cap was agreed upon so that’s not an issue. If you’re concerned that “if the players win, the parity of the NFL will be destroyed”, that won’t happen and that’s not what sane people on the player’s side wants (not Demaurice Smith or Jeffrey Kessler).

What the players want at heart is their fair share of the revenues based on the current and future success of the league. Why are they not entitled to that when the owners bank the TV revenues before the split?

If there’s anything in the lawsuit that the players want and have a shot at winning, it’s the years it takes to become an unrestricted free agent. The rest of the restrictions listed are basically untouchable.

@smorkingapple,
The post was about if each side gets their way, not a compromised result. The period of free agency sans “gloom and doom” was because of certain limitations such as the salary cap, rookie draft, etc. and those limitations are exactly what the suit is aimed at. Think a little more before you try to criticize.

@ puntpasskick
I do see what your point is however the “sane people on the players side” are not the ones running the show (those guys would have negotiated). I don’t think the majority of players want it to play out that way but that is the leverage strategy being executed by Smith & company and since they decertified the union, the sane players have no way to prevent it. If it all actually gets decided by the courts and the players get what they are seeking, the game “as we know it” will be destroyed. Somehow the sane players saying “My bad” is not quite going to fix it.

As for their “fair share”, how are you determining fair? Is it based on a comparison to the owners or is it based on fair/just compensation? I don’t think an objective person can look at an NFL player’s compensation package and say that they are not being paid enough or they are being exploited. It is only when one starts to compare the players’ salary with the ownership profits that it appears unfair. The comparison itself is faulty. Look at what each individual makes and say with a straight face that it is “unfair” compensation. The lowest paid player that makes the team is paid a salary of over $325,000. The highest paid player is over $20M.

At the end of the day, Nelson is not going to rule in favor of everything that’s listed in that lawsuit.

You have nothing to worry about, because at best, I’m guessing the players get the years lowered to become a UFA and my other guess would be a change in the way franchise and transition tags are used ( maybe where they can’t be used in consecutive years to lock a player down to a team ) .

The players are headed down a precarious road but this is the strategy they had in mind when they hired one of D.C’s power trial lawyers to be their leader. They knew this was probable if the owners demands were unreasonable.

@finsfan68 Why hasn’t anyone answered the following question? What would have happened to the NFL had they continued under the current deal? I haven’t seen one reporter ask Goodell that question.

The real answer is this:

Many owners did the equivalent of taking out a subprime loan on these new stadiums no one really needed. Many are overleveraged to the hilt, even with the taxpayer subsidies and used this as an opportunity to get their own “bailout”. Of course, you could say that this justifies everything the owners are doing now. My response is that they made bad judgments, opened new palaces no one really needed and now want to make the #’s work on the backs of the product(the players) instead of taking their own medicine.

This is why they don’t want to release the financials. They know that any serious examination of their financial position would expose how poorly many of these organizations are run and that only exist because of TV money which covers a lot of bad business decisions. Throw in what is probably an obscene amount of labor costs for top executives(why aren’t their pay/benefit packages ever given any scrutiny?) and they know they’ll quickly lose the PR war if statements were released.

I have no sympathy for these guys. They are doing what all rich greedy people do: make gobs of money, make bad decisions and then want their own form of welfare in the form of taxpayer subsidies and renegotiations of labor contracts. Cheer them on if you wish.

Too bad the owners’ demands weren’t unreasonable. I am not really worried about it. It is the principle behind the assertion that has me mad. Those points that you mentioned should be part of the give and take in the negotiation process of the CBA. It has no business in the courts but the players want to use the “nuclear option” as a FIRST resort. The fact that they chose litigation just shows how little leverage (read: factual basis) they have for their demands in the first place. If the players were truly looking out for ALL the players, the health benefits and salary floor/minimum earnings should be priorities, but they are not. They want a few players to be able to make 10s of millions at the expense of the rest.

The owners share the blame in this fiasco, but the players are the ones that have chosen a path that could jeopardize the game. The “piece of the pie” argument is ridiculous. I think the players are fairly compensated. Their “we just want to play” mantra is as disingenuous as their “open the books” line. If they wanted to play, all they had to do was negotiate rather than agitate. Both sides have acted stupidly.

Interesting that Jenkins should talk about being greedy. I just ready a story in the NY post stating that he is a dead beat dad. Apparently he refuses to pay for his oldest son’s glasses, medical trements, and extracurricular actvities. The mom is asking for a $1000 extra per/mom to cover said expenses and Jenkins refuse to pay.

For someone who is planning for his career as an announcer he really needs to clean up his act and chose his words more wisely.

“The owners share the blame in this fiasco, but the players are the ones that have chosen a path that could jeopardize the game. ”

How can you justify this statement? THE OWNERS OPTED OUT of a deal right after the most successful NFL season ever, not the players. Sure it was their right, but what was the justification?

Why do we always look at the labor and never the management when it comes to issues like this? Why does labor need to sacrifice while owners make more and never sacrifice? When does this perversion of what’s fair end?

As for what these guys make being fair, it’s all relative. Someone thinks what you make is unfair but the market for your skills determines that, not comparisons to regular folk. What the hell did the Hunt son do to deserve inheriting his millions from his father? Is that fair?

Again I ask, what would have happened had they continued under the old deal? Why was it so bad for owners? What teams were losing money? What was the risk?

The answers to those questions would expose the NFL for what it is, a bunch of poorly run businesses that have been lucky to get bailed out by sky high TV ratings and fans willing to pay obscene amounts of money for stuff that was peanuts two decades ago.